Slipping pedal

[Philippa mcauliffe]

Hi,

Advice please. The only reasonable Conservatorium harp we have (the other 2 are ancient shockers) is a fairly new L+H Chicago extended. I dont play it very often but it is useful to practice on if I am stuck at uni for something. And a newer con student (my old pupil) plays it more often. It has a pedal that slips natural to flat (F) without touching it – while playing. My harp is a camac…never had this problem. Although I have the Carl Swanson maintenance book it doesn’t exactly talk about this….any ideas please? Many thanks, Philippa

[Sid Humphreys]

Could be too many windings on the pedal felt or even too large a pedal slot felt. This happened to me once with an E pedal; resolved by removing the felt and re-sewing it with the seam in the proper place. Hope this helps!

[carl-swanson]

I misread your original post and put a reply up here that didn’t match at all what you were asking. So sorry.

The problem of a slipping pedal might have something to do with the felt wrappings, OR, it might have something to do with the pedal spring. First the felt. If the felt wrappings are too many or too thick, or are too loose, that could cause the pedal to slip. The fix would be to rewrap the felt, using fewer wrappings or thinner felt, so that the pedal can fit into the natural slot without a problem.

The pedal spring performs two functions. One of course is to push the pedal back up into flat. The other function is to pull the pedal into the natural and sharp slots. It does this by virtue of the fact that the arm of the spring that goes into the pedal bar is slightly twisted, so that the little right-angle bend at the end of that arm is not at a right angle to the coils of the spring, but rather points slightly up from a right angle. It’s that slight twist to that arm that pulls the pedal into the slot. If the spring for that pedal does not have that twist, or it is not enough, then twist the right angle end of the arm a little more. You’ll need to put the spring in a vise and you’ll need a pair of pliers to do it.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by carl-swanson.

[balfour-knight]

Years ago I had this problem with a L&H 85 CG. The F pedal would pop out of natural back up to flat, even during a concert! I was lucky enough, back then, to get a harp tech to fix it for me, and it was indeed the spring, like Carl said. Good luck with fixing this, Philippa! I love having my Camac now, too.

Harp Hugs,
Balfour

[Alison]

Annoyingly I think the geometry of springs on the Ayoama harps is such that one needs extra effort to slide a pedal horizontally into position and this can be noisy – not really noticeable in orchestra but borderline in solos. I thought about upending both harps to compare as the Salvi has a smooth action so obviously the tension/direction vector is as it should be, as Carl states, set to pull the bias into the slot.
It wasn’t until I started teaching a pupil with an older well-used Aoyama that my niggling suspicion was confirmed, (noise and effort are pronounced) enough to discuss and think about it. Have asked a technician and he informed me that the Aoyama geometry is different (as if to say I can’t improve or adjust it) but I might at least take a look and compare the two.

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